Breaking middle ground

I found interesting your piece on the EAI market [Web services puts squeeze on EAI]. We have seen that many organisations have, in the past several years, urgently embarked on large-scale end-to-end integration projects because of the vast potential for streamlining business processes, reusing existing application logic, and interfacing electronically with partners, suppliers and customers. In many cases, these solutions only hard-wired numerous point-to-point connections. Each connection was developed in isolation from the applications it joined. Each connection took too long to build, cost too much to maintain, and was too inflexible to allow for business process changes.

Web services standards represent a breakthrough that has markedly changed this equation. They are making the process of total business integration far more cost-effective, and far more flexible. This approach overcomes the limitations of the traditional EAI solutions. We believe the key market opportunity is for a standards-based integration solution for large enterprise customers who have a need to rationalise their IT spend on middleware infrastructure.

Barry Morris
CEO, IONA Technologies

When integration isn’t

It was with great interest that I read the recent ‘crib sheet’ on business intelligence in Infoconomist. I found, however, that the article frequently confused the integrated approach of software companies such as Oracle, which offers OLAP, ETT and data mining within the database and application server, with that of companies such as Microsoft, which do not offer this integration at the technology level. Competitors to Oracle – including IBM and Microsoft – still need to offer additional technologies to complete these functions. The word ‘integration’ in these cases is presumably used in the context of marketing bundles rather than true technological integration.

Alan Hartwell
Director of 9i, Oracle UK

Internal differences

I would like the opportunity to clarify one of the points that was raised in a critique of my company in your magazine (Waterford seeks end to email abuse), as it presented a somewhat confusing message about our position in the marketplace. The article referred to our future plans for expansion into the US market. But the suggestion that we will come “head-to-head with established rivals” such as Lyris Technologies pigeonholes us in the wrong category of email software products. Many vendors, including Lyris, sell content filtering or blocking software. But our product, MailMeter, offers passive, non-invasive management of internal as well as external email, effectively tracking employee usage without compromising privacy. Content filtering and blocking tools will only track email as it enters and leaves a company, but this means that internal, non-work related email goes unchecked.

Brendan Nolan
CEO, Waterford Technologies

Integration sweet spot

I read your piece on web services with great interest (Web services puts squeeze on EAI). The real revolution in software resulting from web services is that software components will be even more numerous and distributed in nature Enterprises that served the internet world moved from enabling content creation to processes that focused on information management. In similar fashion, enterprises will need software providers to help them move from creating web services to orchestrating, managing and monitoring these services at a business level. This is the sweet spot of integration tools.

Aditya Shivram
Marketing director, EMEA, Tibco Software

Working 366 days a year

I read Andrew Lawrence’s article on quarter-end discounts and revenue recognition [Oracle joins Cisco in ‘hockey stick’ assault] with interest. However, I thought his statement that Oracle staff had to work on ’31 November’ was pushing revenue recognition into new ground. All we need are longer quarters and IT companies will prosper again. Oracle is obviously ahead of the industry again.

Jon Moulton
Chairman, Cedar Group